Pope Francis Speaks About Historic Meeting with Patriarch Kirill : “I Felt an Internal Joy”

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Pope Francis was full of joy and enthusiasm after his meeting with Patriarch Kirill. His face revealed this clearly as he spoke on the plane to journalists shortly after departing from Havana and heading for Mexico City. His face was glowing with happiness, as he confided, “I felt an internal joy.”
“We spoke together as brothers, we spoke freely and with frankness about the things that concern us. We didn’t mince words,” he stated.
“We spoke as pastors, about our concerns for our churches and for the world where wars are being fought piecemeal but risk turning into a world war,” he said.
He revealed that during their private conversation, at one point he told Kirill that “if we wait” to work out Christian unity in the study, the Lord would arrive before it happened. “We make unity by walking together,” he stated.
He said they had talked together in the presence of the interpreters and of Metropolitan Kirill, the head of the Department of External Affairs of the Patriarchate of Moscow, and of Cardinal Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity. They also spoke about the Pan-Orthodox meeting that will take place in Crete in June, he said.
He and Kirill had discussed “how we can work together,” he said, and in this context he commented on the joint declaration they had just signed. That 30 point declaration covers many issues, some of which could give rise to questions and discussion. Well aware of this, and seeking to avoid sterile debate, Francis offered an interpretative key to its reading. “It is not a political or sociological document, it is a pastoral document written by two bishops in which they express concern for their churches and for the world’”
It is clear that for Francis the most important thing was his meeting with Kirill, not the document, though the latter too has its importance as it identifies ways in which Catholics and Orthodox can work together on the road to unity.
The declaration covers a wide range of subjects, ranging from the unity they shared in the Christian millennium, to “the wounds” of division “caused by old and recent conflicts.” Significantly it adds that “mindful of the permanence of many obstacles” to recovering that unity, Francis and Kirill express “the hope that our meeting may contribute to the re-establishment of this unity.” On this road, they committed themselves “to combine our efforts” to give witness to the Gospel of Christ in the modern world.
He said they had talked together in the presence of the interpreters and of Metropolitan Kirill, the head of the Department of External Affairs of the Patriarchate of Moscow, and of Cardinal Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity. They also spoke about the Pan-Orthodox meeting that will take place in Crete in June, he said.
He and Kirill had discussed “how we can work together,” he said, and in this context he commented on the joint declaration they had just signed. That 30 point declaration covers many issues, some of which could give rise to questions and discussion. Well aware of this, and seeking to avoid sterile debate, Francis offered an interpretative key to its reading. “It is not a political or sociological document, it is a pastoral document written by two bishops in which they express concern for their churches and for the world’”
It is clear that for Francis the most important thing was his meeting with Kirill, not the document, though the latter too has its importance as it identifies ways in which Catholics and Orthodox can work together on the road to unity.
The declaration covers a wide range of subjects, ranging from the unity they shared in the Christian millennium, to “the wounds” of division “caused by old and recent conflicts.” Significantly it adds that “mindful of the permanence of many obstacles” to recovering that unity, Francis and Kirill express “the hope that our meeting may contribute to the re-establishment of this unity.” On this road, they committed themselves “to combine our efforts” to give witness to the Gospel of Christ in the modern world.

Source:http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/i-felt-internal-joy-pope-francis-speaks-about-historic-meeting-patriarch-kirill

Voters Want Clinton to Tell - Things Are Not O.K.

So a fascist and a socialist walk into a bar in Manchester…

The Trump soufflé didn’t fall in New Hampshire, and Democrats did not get cold feet about voting for Bernie Sanders. For the first time since 1960, all 10 counties went for the same candidate in both parties’ primaries, with Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders building commanding leads from rural, economically distressed Coos County to the highly educated band of Boston exurbs in Hillsborough and Rockingham counties.

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On the Democratic side, the huge age gap in Iowa showed up again in New Hampshire, with Mr. Sanders getting 83 percent (!) of the under-30 vote, 66 percent of those aged 30 to 44, a more modest 53 percent among 45-to-64-year-olds, and only 44 percent of those 65 or older. (Mr. Trump won all age categories among Republicans, but that electorate skewed older.) The “boomersplaining” of the past week, which saw Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem mocking young Sanders supporters, was disastrous for Hillary Clinton in a state that hates to be told it’s on the verge of voting wrong. Daughter Chelsea Clinton, though closer in age to the typical Sanders supporters, did not help matters when she attacked the Sanders health-care plan by mischaracterizing it as an attempt to end Obamacare without having an alternative in place.

Ms. Clinton remains the heavy favorite for the Democratic nomination. The New Hampshire results suggest that she’ll have trouble in the Brown/Tsongas belt, or the states that were most resistant to Bill Clinton in the 1992 primaries—New England, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and Western states with relatively small Latino populations like Utah and Washington. But the results of Nashua, N.H., may not have much predictive value in the South (where black voters may opt for the more practical candidate) or in the big industrial states of the Northeast and Midwest. That’s assuming the Clinton campaign doesn’t panic and launch counterproductive attacks on Mr. Sanders (the worst strategy for the South Carolina primary would be for Bill to repeat his “fairy tale” description of Barack Obama in 2008).

“I know I have some work to do now, particularly with young people,” Ms. Clinton said in her concession speech. “But I will repeat again what I have said this week: Even if they are not supporting me now, I support them.”

Presumably her campaign is working on something better than that. Her loss in New Hampshire has a lot to do with the perception of a corrupt political system and what Mr. Sanders called, in his victory speech, “a rigged economy where ordinary Americans work longer hours for lower wages while almost all new income and wealth goes to the top 1 percent.” (America’s editors explore the political import of this feeling in our current editorial, “Election Angst.”) This perception is not limited to those in immediate economic distress, and exit polls had Mr. Sanders winning among all income groups except voters in households making more than $200,000 per year.

The New York Times’ Brendan Nyhan (“Hillary’s Challenge: Peddling Pragmatism”) writes that Ms. Clinton needs to shift from her experience to a promise of change, and must do more than point out that the Sanders agenda would have zero chance of getting through a Republican Congress: “Her realism about the prospects for the Sanders agenda is implicitly dispiriting about the prospects for liberal domestic policy change in her presidency as well. Indeed, she often sounds as if she were acquiescing to a status quo that Democrats find objectionable.”

The “status quo” arguably includes the presidency of Barack Obama, and perhaps Ms. Clinton is nervous about alienating his supporters, but Mr. Sanders has largely kept Mr. Obama out of his sweeping criticisms of our economic and political system (even saying that Mr. Obama has done a “fantastic job” as president), so this clearly isn’t an impossible balancing act.

What will not help Ms. Clinton’s campaign (as the Chelsea Clinton dust-up should have proved) are attempts to claim the populist label in too-cute ways. At the Atlantic, David Frum noticed that “in her concession speech, Hillary Clinton boasted of her small donors. More than 70 percent had given less than $100, she claimed: ‘I know that doesn’t fit with the narrative.’” Mr. Frum pointed out that, regardless of how many people have given to the Clinton campaign, some 85 percent of the total haul has come from big donors. (Mr. Sanders has received 77 percent of his donations in sums of $200 or less, compared with 17 percent for Ms. Clinton, according to the Wall Street Journal.)

But I don’t think the Clinton campaign’s rough going in the early nomination contests means much in terms of her ability to win in November. Over the past few decades, there’s been very little correlation between how a candidate does in the primaries versus the general election. Mr. Obama, for example, erased the old rule that the party that settles on its nominee quicker has a decisive edge. And if Mr. Sanders brings new voters into the political process, it’s hard to imagine them sitting home in November or voting Republican.

Source: http://americamagazine.org/content/unconventional-wisdom/voters-want-clinton-tell-them-things-are-not-ok

What Nelson Mandela Learned in the School of Prison??

It was on this day in 1990—February 11—that a man of great dignity and bearing emerged from many years of captivity into the sunlight of freedom. It was a long time coming, this “freedom”; as he had spent the large part of his life—27 years—in a narrow, cramped prison cell. Eighteen of those years were spent in the same place, on a remote island, where he was forced to work along with others in a lime quarry. They were difficult years—years that could easily make or break a human being. He was imprisoned for all that time because of what he was and who he was: a black man. He was imprisoned too, for what he believed as a black man: that he had rights and responsibilities equal to everyone else; only the people who imprisoned him refused to believe that.

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And in that time, while his health suffered, his spirit did not. The reason for that was as simple as it was complex: for he was, as the phrase goes, “interiorly free.” Having been forced to work along with others in a lime quarry, his eyesight was negatively affected. It deteriorated from having to endure the sun glare reflecting from the quarry itself. (His prison guards would refuse him the protection of sunglasses.) And having had to inhabit a narrow and dank cell, he would later on suffer from tuberculosis. It was a struggle for his body to survive; but only did so because of the determination of his will and his spirit, which would not permit him to surrender to the hate which apartheid had imposed and imprisoned him.

It was his spirit that enabled Nelson Mandela to survive. It was his spirit that enabled him to prosper amid such inhumane conditions of the dank cell, the enforced solitude, the primitive living arrangements of a patted straw mat to sleep on, a metal cup and plate from which to subsist on and the use of an ordinary pail that served as his toilet and the limited human contact he had through sparse letters and even more sparse human visitations. His only connection to the outside world, to the freedom he had once known, was the wide prison barred window that allowed him to look out to the sun and to the sea and to the life beyond.  

In those years, his spirit became his teacher: the extroverted man became not an introverted man, but an “interior” man, in that he came to terms with himself, his humanity and the humanity of his fellows, even of those who hated him. The spirit that was his soul imparted lessons that became a part of him, never to be erased, but firmly implanted in him.

In time, his living conditions would improve and his health would be looked after; but he would still be physically imprisoned. Not for long would he be; people from beyond that prison window would take up his cause and fight for his release, despite the tremendous opposition from the people who possessed power, those who were not his own and those who refused to understand him or his purpose.

Eventually, he would be released and eventually, he would become the president of his country and preside over a reconciliation he desired, not just for his own people but for also for those who had the power and privilege and who denied it for so many years from people like him. He would become a “player” on the world stage and he would meet with popes and presidents amid great acclaim. Despite the trials and tribulations of his life, he acted with grace and dignity that befitted his humanity. When he died—at the age of 95—after a quiet retirement, the world reflected upon the momentous achievement of a man once a prisoner who became president and they mourned him. He was proud of who he was, but he did not let that pride get the better of him. He knew who he was and what he was meant to be: a free human being.

He looked out that window of Robben Island many, many times. And when he looked out, he recognized a truth that is applicable to us all, whatever we are, whomever we are, wherever we live. This truth he recounted in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom: “No one is born hating another person because of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

“I went on a long holiday for 27 years,” said he, of his prison years in South Africa.

Source: http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/what-nelson-mandela-learned-school-prison